From the cover of “Xinjiang Women” to extra-judicial internment in under a year: Rahile Dawut, who did more than anyone to preserve and document the kinds of Uyghur traditions I study, has been forcibly disappeared. nytimes.com/2018/08/10/wor…pic.twitter.com/ipDQnKa9vq

“While Chinese policymakers worried that Uighurs were increasingly drawn to radical forms of Islam from the Middle East, Professor Dawut’s work portrayed Uighur heritage as more diverse and tolerant..” But now she’s missing. By @ChuBailiang@austinramzy

At least one of Prof Dawut's grad students, a personal friend and US-educated, has also since disappeared. She told me how Prof Dawut would leverage her reputation to spring students from detention for possessing Islamic content - their research material

Our colleague Rahile Dawut is one of many Uyghur scholars disappeared over the last year. Reports of two university presidents, much of XJ University's Humanities Institute, many others arrested or disappeared. #Free Rahile

The Xinjiang region, more than anywhere else in China, has demonstrated how Xi Jinping is determined to redraw the boundaries of what is permitted in religion, academic research, civil society and ethnic expression.

“The accounts of the ‘re-education’ regime that people are undergoing in those camps are harrowing," said Rachel Harris, who studies Uighur music. "I imagine my lovely, principled, dedicated colleague there, and I feel incredibly angry.”

The academic, Rahile Dawut, 52, told a relative last December that she planned to travel to Beijing from Urumqi and has not been heard from since ... her family and friends are sure that she was secretly detained as part of a severe clampdown on Uighurs.
nytimes.com/2018/08/10/wor…pic.twitter.com/YoYwgHker7

She had lectured across China and the world to explain and celebrate Uighurs' varied traditions. Her research was funded by Chinese government ministries and praised by other scholars. Then she disappeared.

A great scholar and an even better person--but apparently an "extremist" in the eyes of officials in Xinjiang. Was shocked and saddened when I heard the news a few months ago. Star Scholar Disappears as Crackdown Engulfs Western China

Professor Dawut, prominent ethnographer, has disappeared and appears to be among the hundreds of thousands of Muslims secretly rounded up by authorities in western China. By ⁦@ChuBailiang⁩ and @austinramzy